iPhone 3GS gets the jailbreak treatment, purplera1n ensues

The wait is over: a jailbreak for the iPhone 3GS has been released into the …

For those of you who have been waiting for a jailbreak solution for your shiny new iPhone 3GS, the wait is over. iPhone hacker extraordinaire George Hotz was hard at work this weekend putting together release candidates for the newest incarnation of the iPhone. The project, coined purplera1n, started out as a tool only for certain variants of Windows, but has since blossomed into candidates for most modern variants of Windows (including Windows 7) and a Mac solution.

As you probably know, jailbreaking allows a user to install third-party applications from outside the App Store and access the Unix underpinnings of the iPhone OS—things that are otherwise locked away from end-users.

This jailbreak, however, isn't without controversy. The developers involved have more or less called out the iPhone Dev team (those responsible for many of the iPhone jailbreaks to date and have stated they wont be releasing their jailbreak until after iPhone OS 3.1 is out, which is currently only available to developers):

Normally I don't make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn't how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn't worth waiting because you might have the "last" hole in the iPhone.

If you only trust the iPhone Dev team, you may want to wait; just keep in mind that your wait may be a while. Also keep in mind that, as of this writing, we have heard at least one report that not all applications in Cydia are working after using purplera1n, so your mileage may vary.